


i heard your voice

by nightquills



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: AFTG Exchange, AFTG Spring Exchange 2020, Allusions to canon typical abuse, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, And so the soulmate AU reader becomes the soulmate AU writer, Can you tell that I hate retail?, English Major Andrew Minyard, First Meetings, M/M, Soul Bond, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:07:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24531295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightquills/pseuds/nightquills
Summary: Andrew didn’t believe in soulmates, and he sure as hell didn’t believe that there was one out there for him. He may have been a bit hasty in jumping to that conclusion.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 18
Kudos: 387





	i heard your voice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Leahelisabeth (fortheloveofcamelot)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortheloveofcamelot/gifts).



> This is a gift for [leahlisabeth](http://leahlisabeth.tumblr.com/) for the [aftgexchange](http://aftgexchange.tumblr.com/). One of your prompts was for a soulmate AU, so that's what I did—I hope you enjoy!!
> 
> The title this time around is a lyric from ["John, Give 'Em Hell" by Tyler Glenn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r7IgIweHcA).
> 
> Before I let y'all get to the actual story itself, I'd just like to give a shout-out to [Ominous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ominous/pseuds/Ominous) for being such a lovely cheerleader, sounding board, and beta <3

Most of the time, Andrew does not mind his job at the Foxden Bookstore. It pays above minimum wage, he gets a nice discount on books, and he usually has enough time during his shifts to work on homework. 

The first few weeks at the beginning of the semester, however? Absolute hell. 

Andrew realizes that he should be appreciative of the professors calling in books with them instead of just linking their students to Amazon—god knows that they steal enough from independent bookstores as it is—but the chaos really doesn't feel worth it. 

First, there's the tedious process of organizing the books. The staff at Foxden separates them by subject and then by course number, and then organizes them alphabetically from there. They even put up very helpful little signs on the shelves to say which one contains which subjects. 

But god knows that the student body doesn't appreciate that, because apparently they can't fucking read—as evidenced by the fact that someone comes and asks Andrew where their book is every five fucking minutes. 

When he goes to help and finds that they truly are out of the book in question, he is met with anxious questions or entitled demands about when they'll be back in stock again. He doesn't understand the worry. Even the new freshmen should have heard that the first week is bullshit anyways, and the real teaching doesn't start until after the end of add/drop. 

Ugh, don't get him started on add/drop. The number of times he has to repeat the same damn spiel about how Foxden will accept returns on course books until the end of add/drop—and how you need your receipt to do so—only to have countless fucking punks come back either without their receipts or the day after the deadline to try to return their books. 

Andrew's customer service is questionable at the best of times, but during these hell weeks he gives up on even the pretense of it. He projects his foul mood in the hope that the assholes around him will take the hint and at least attempt to sort out their own shit before they bother him.

Even the sight of a pretty boy isn't enough to draw him from his funk. 

He at least seems to have been capable enough to find his books on his own, which is a nice change. Andrew doesn't offer to help with his stack of books and leaves the auburn-haired, blue-eyed boy to try and place it on the counter without knocking it over. 

He fails, and they both watch as the top book tumbles to the floor, landing at just the right angle to fold the cover in half. 

The boy swears under his breath, though not in English—French, perhaps?—and bends over to scoop it back up. 

"I hope you were planning on buying that one," Andrew says. 

The boy huffs. "Yes, obviously. Don't worry about it."

Andrew lifts an eyebrow and starts to ring up the books. His memory being what it is, he can easily recall which class each one is for. College Writing, Comparative Politics, Exploring the Universe, Calculus I, and Intro to Linear Algebra—he guesses by the number of GenEds that the boy is a freshman.

Good for him. He's probably not too jaded by the idea of higher education just yet. 

As per usual, Andrew winces internally at the sight of the total. He has no idea why textbooks are so expensive; Foxden isn't getting much of the profits, that's for sure, and he doubts that the people that wrote them are either. 

When he repeats the cost to the boy, he sees that same wince cross his face. Andrew is inordinately annoyed that even when the boy is scrunching up his nose, he's still attractive. 

The boy slides cash over the counter for the whole total, which Andrew raises an eyebrow at. This day and age, who carries around that much paper money? 

Oh well, Andrew thinks to himself as he grabs the counterfeit marker to test the larger bills. He really doubts that someone doing something so conspicuous as dropping $200 cash would think that they could get away with fake money, but it's store policy to check anyway. 

The bills are fine, so Andrew pulls the boy's change and hands it over. He drops it on the counter, as he does, because he doesn't like to entertain the possibility of physical contact with anyone. 

It turns out that his efforts are for nothing this time around, however, because one of the quarters bounces and rolls towards the edge, and both Andrew and the boy move reflexively to stop it from falling. Their hands slam together on the counter, to which both of them pull back immediately. Andrew feels himself tense up, and he watches the boy take a few steps back to put some distance between them. 

“Sorry,” the boy says, to which Andrew gives a terse nod. He grabs a paper bag and focuses on putting the books in it rather than the way the skin of his hand is tingling as though it can still feel the other’s touch. 

Andrew watches the boy put his change away as he prints the receipt off. He sticks it in the bag and repeats the refund spiel to the boy, who is quick to flee the store as soon as Andrew is done. 

Andrew finds himself intrigued against his better interest, but he doesn't have long to think about it—some idiot has knocked over a display with their backpack, and Andrew has to set it to rights while still trying to man the register. He honestly considers quitting on the spot. 

Andrew ends his shift with a headache starting to build behind his eyes, but he figures that's just the cherry on top of his horrible day and, after popping a couple of ibuprofen, decides to ignore it as best as he can.

* * *

He wakes up the next day and the headache is both present and _worse_ than yesterday, which he takes as a sign from above that the world is planning on fucking with him again today. He allows himself a couple minutes longer to linger in bed before forcing himself to get up and drive to campus—he doesn't want to use up all of his allowed absences at the beginning of the semester and not have any left when the seasonal depression hits.

Andrew pulls up to a red light and takes the opportunity to rub his temples, as though pressing there will somehow help to lessen the discomfort. He's contemplating the malicious intent of whatever engineers created the algorithms and sensors that keep traffic lights red with nobody in fucking sight—he’s literally the only one at the intersection—when he's struck by an invasive thought shouting itself at him. 

_A tridiagonal T has 2 nonzeros in the pivot row and only one nonzero below the pivot. Only 2n operations for elimination on a tridiagonal matrix, so T = bidiagonal L times bidiagonal U._

He's glad that his foot is on the brake, because his hands jerk on the wheel at how abruptly the thought comes and then leaves him. 

Andrew is no stranger to intrusive thoughts, but this one has really set itself apart from the others. Was that fucking _math_? Andrew avoids math as a general rule—he took the easiest class he could to get the GenEd requirement out of the way, and he hated even that. Consulting his eidetic memory reveals that yes, he's never seen that combination of words before, and he most definitely doesn't know what it means. 

Andrew's mind goes over the possible reasons behind this new development. He dismisses the most obvious one right out of the gate, and quickly decides that this is just the newest brand of crazy his shit brain has in store for him. He resolves to keep an eye on the situation, should it happen again, and makes a promise that he'll bring it up at his next session with Bee. 

Andrew can't exactly put it from his mind, but he can at least move it to the back burner when the light finally changes to green. When he gets to class, he forces himself to devote his whole attention to his Postcolonial Studies professor as she introduces the first novel the class will be reading. 

He already has his copy of it—a free PDF he found and printed off after some googling. He's well aware of the irony, but his employee discount at the bookstore can only get him so far. He'll gladly suffer the annoyance of not having the same page numbers as everyone else instead of paying for a book that he knows he won't pick up again once the semester ends.

Andrew manages to get through his three classes without thinking too deeply about earlier, though he maybe drives a little more carefully than he normally does as he heads to the bookstore for his afternoon shift. 

When he gets to the Foxden, he heads straight to the storeroom to drop off his bag, ignoring his coworker's greeting as he goes. He doesn't know how or why Katelyn is so friendly, but it's a little exhausting at even the best of times. The upside is that her amiable nature means she's happy to be on the register, which means that Andrew can restock and organize the shelves with minimal customer interaction.

He slips his name tag lanyard over his head, which is covered from end to end in the literature-themed enamel pins that Renee has gifted him, and enters the fray. He spends some time among the course books, trying to bring order to the chaos left by customers pulling books and haphazardly shoving them back wherever they’ll fit. 

When he gets those stacks looking once again more or less presentable, he heads over to greener pastures—also known as the poetry shelves. He loves to pull a book down and flip to a random page, to see if whatever is written there is enough to make him feel something.

Today, at least, it is. He reads:

_if they used it against you / it is yours / to make sing_

and feels it resonate with some broken and glass-sharp part of himself that won’t allow itself to be forgotten. 

Those words stick with him, reverberating in the confines of his mind for the rest of his shift.

* * *

When Andrew’s headache continues for yet another day, he almost decides to say screw it and take a sick day despite his hesitation yesterday. He wakes up in a foul mood and considers, for just a moment, scheduling himself an appointment at the university’s health services. Then he remembers that—with the exception of Bee—he can't stand any healthcare professionals, and resolves to stick the bottle of ibuprofen in his bag so that at least it’s close at hand. 

He wonders if his headaches can maybe be attributed to caffeine withdrawal, and uses that as an excuse to stop by Starbucks on his way to campus. When he sees the drive through line wrapping around the corner, he decides that it would be easier to walk in and order instead. He parks and heads inside to join the queue there, and he's about to step up to the register when he's struck by another intrusive thought. 

_Keys, keys, keys, where are my keys?_

For all the shit his brain could come up with, this one takes the cake—his car isn't one of the newer models that allows you to just leave the keys sitting in your cupholder or wherever the fuck, for one. Secondly, he is literally holding his keys in his left hand and tracing the ridges with his thumb; he knows exactly where they are. 

He doesn't tend to worry about keeping his keys on him. If anything, he tends to be more concerned about making sure that _other_ people don't have keys so that any door he locks stays that way. He knows that locks can be picked, but having at least the illusion that he can keep other people out is a necessary comfort for him to relax inside the walls of his apartment.

Any further contemplation is interrupted by the girl working the register saying that she can help the next customer, and Andrew shakes his head as he moves to order. Walking back to his car a few minutes later with his drink in hand and a cake pop hanging from his teeth, he decides that he doesn't have time for this if he wants to make it to class. Any further reflection will be a problem for Future Andrew, and good fucking luck to him.

Even with speeding the rest of the way and cutting off some guy to steal the closest parking spot to the English building, Andrew still walks into class ten minutes late. He ignores the glare his American Romanticism professor shoots him and settles into a seat at the back of the class, pulling a notebook so that he can at least give off the impression that he's taking notes. 

Unfortunately, it doesn't feel like the caffeine is helping him at all. When he meets eyes with one of his classmates as class ends and she immediately turns away, he guesses that his pain is manifesting on his face and making his carefully curated resting bitch face more severe than usual. That's fine by him—hopefully people will take the cue and give him a wider berth than usual, because his already limited capacity for human interaction is especially low right now. 

He has another class 15 minutes from now, but at least it's his last one for the day. He gets to the classroom and chooses a corner seat that has slightly less exposure to the offensive overhead fluorescents and waits for class to start. He suffers through another hour of instruction before he's free, and the pounding at his temples leads him to decide that he'll head home and take a nap before work. 

Andrew isn’t really the hoping type, so he’s under no illusion that the nap will help with any of his problems. In fact, he’s pretty sure that he’ll only wake up more tired and irritated than before. That doesn’t mean, however, that he won’t give into the siren’s call of temporary oblivion. 

He sets an alarm on his phone and falls into an uneasy sleep. He wakes to his alarm a few hours later sweaty and disoriented, but surprisingly free of pain for the moment. He ignores Nicky's texts so that he can jump in the shower before heading out, and leaves for work with his hair still wet. 

Normally the Foxden's air conditioning is a cool relief from the balmy weather outside, but today it sends shivers down Andrew's spine. He didn't bother bringing a jacket with him, and thus resolves to tough it out. He’s faced worse things in life than being a bit cold for a few hours. 

Unfortunately, he's paired together with the manager's partner tonight. It's not unfortunate in that he doesn't dislike them, per se, but rather that they're often doing inventory and Andrew thus gets stuck on the register. He sighs, but figures that he can at least take this chance to get ahead on some of his readings. 

Thankfully the store isn't too busy—the dedicated partygoers use Thursday as a springboard into their weekend ragers, so he imagines that fraternity row is seeing far more activity than main street at the moment. Most of the customers that do come in are clearly past college age, and are thus more casual customers than the panicked students that have been the norm for the last few days. That doesn't make them any smarter, however, and Andrew passes silent judgement on all of them. 

There's about an hour to close when he looks up at the shopkeeper's bell to see the red-haired menace from the other day. They make eye contact, and Andrew holds it until the boy looks away first and walks further into the store. Rather than heading towards the course books, however, he seems content to wander around. Andrew watches him from the corner of his eye and feels a little amusement when he sees him stop in front of the poetry shelves. 

Based on the classes he was buying for last time and the clearly athletic vibe about him, Andrew didn't have him pinned as someone who reads poetry. 

He forces himself to look away from the boy and focus on his readings again. He's not entirely successful, because it feels like his eyes are drawn to him like a magnet struggling to reach it's pair, but he does manage to get through a few paragraphs by the time that the boy walks up to the register. 

He has just one book with him, and he sets it down on the counter and slides it over closer to Andrew. 

Andrew looks down at the soft pink and blue cover and allows himself to be slightly surprised at the boy's taste. Rather than one of the more well-known poets whose books Andrew is used to seeing people buy, Mr. Bright Blue Eyes has picked a newer and lesser known poet. One that Andrew was reading just the other day, in fact. 

“You don’t seem the poetry type,” Andrew says to the boy’s face, because he can’t quite help himself.

“You’re right. I don’t really understand poetry,” the boy responds. “But I think my soulmate was reading something from this yesterday, so I figured I could give it a shot.”

_What._

The boy had been looking at the counter as he said it, but at that his eyes snap up to meet Andrew’s. That confirms it. 

Andrew suddenly feels like his feet are anchored in place where he stands, but his brain is floating away. He had, for a moment, considered that his issues the last few days could be attributed to the growing pains of a soul bond. He had summarily dismissed them, though—Andrew didn’t believe in soulmates, and he sure as hell didn’t believe that there was one out there for him. He may have been a bit hasty in jumping to that conclusion. 

That is, if he doesn’t suddenly wake up and realize that the boy in front of him was just a pipedream. Which he won’t discount. Andrew has barely spoken to him, but the boy doesn’t even look real. 

The boy is still staring right at him, an uncertain smile on his lips. 

Andrew swallows heavily, feeling far too exposed and fighting the urge to put his back to the wall. He had first hand experience with how twisted the human mind can be. He can barely handle the shit his own brain throws at him most days, and now he’s supposed to cope with someone else’s thoughts—whatever issues this boy in front of him has—on top of that? And in turn, this boy is going to be a firsthand witness to all of Andrew’s trauma and hangups, the shadows that won’t leave the corners of his mind no matter how hard he tries to shine a light on them. 

And god, if this boy feels pity, if he feels disgust for whatever he finds there? It’ll literally be in his brain. Andrew has plentiful experience with ignoring and tuning things out, with removing himself mentally from what’s going on even if he can’t do so physically. Even with all his practice, he doesn’t know if he could do so under those circumstances. 

He doesn’t have faith in the match-making services of whatever higher power is out there, if there even _is_ one out there, but. He looks at the boy in front of him again, sees how earnest his face is as he waits for Andrew to respond. 

He figures he’s fucked either way, so he might as well commit. He holds up his name tag, repeats his own name. 

“I’m Neil,” the boy says. Neil. As unpredictable as he is unreal. He proves Andrew right by extending his hand across the counter, like he wants to shake Andrew’s hand. 

Andrew stares at it for a moment, then slowly reaches his hand out in kind. The brush of their skin together is just as electric as their fleeting contact from before. Andrew feels himself unwittingly relaxing his grip into the warmth of Neil’s grasp.

 _Nice to meet you,_ Andrew hears, and this time it’s so much clearer—so very obviously a voice different from his own. For as weird and unprecedented as it is, he doesn’t think he minds it.

**Author's Note:**

> The poetry excerpt that Andrew reads is from "TURING TEST_ LOVE" by Franny Choi. It's featured in her collection "Soft Science," which I would definitely recommend!
> 
> I'm just going to casually link to [my tumblr](http://nightquills.tumblr.com/) and [my twitter](https://twitter.com/nightquills) in case any of you would like to come and yell with me about Andreil. (Please come and yell with me about Andreil—I'd love to hear from you!)


End file.
